EZEMA’s latest move—a flashy new political academy—is being presented as the party’s ticket to an impossible comeback after its glaring failure in the previous election. In a setback that saw EZEMA losing ground to a party with a concentrated regional vote, the National Movement of Amhara , which managed to secure the second most seats in the House of People’s Representatives despite its narrow focus, the party now appears to be grasping at straws.
Deputy Chairman Yohannes Mekonnen, (PhD). lecturer at Addis Ababa University, shared a remark, “politics is not a fight, its wisdom,” taken from leader of Freedom and Equality party Dr Abdulkadir Adem almost immediately after the academy’s announcement to celebrate the “historic milestone”. But when a party is forced into a corner by poor electoral performance—losing ground for second most seats by a regional, nationalist and unpopular party like NaMA—such statements ring with a bitter irony considering the dominant government of Prosperity party. Critics see this educational initiative not as a genuine effort to build a better political culture, but rather as a desperate attempt to mask the flaws of a fading campaign strategy.
“Politics needs new faces and ideologies,….If we want EZEMA to prevail as a real opposition party, we need pioneering politicians ” said minister Birhanu Nega in the press conference.
The party’s electoral woes are hard to ignore. With the current federal seat of Addis Ababa’s constituenciey 1 and 9 safely held by Eyasu Elias of the prosperity party, who garnered a significant 25,241 votes in the last election, and is expected to come out on top yet again. Yohannes faces an uphill battle in his bid for office. Neither he nor the party’s chairperson, Birhanu Nega, holds a seat in Parliament, underscoring a reliance on academic credentials and intellectual posturing rather than proven political clout. This disconnect between ideology and electoral success has left voters and political observers deeply skeptical.
Adding insult to injury, while NaMA’s narrow focus enabled it to scoop up a surprisingly respectable mandate in a region-centred contest, EZEMA’s new academy does little to address the practical issues that alienated its base. Even during a marathon four-hour session on the Mindset Podcast, Birhanu Nega condemned the rise of Amhara nationalism—labeling it “extremist” and recounting frayed incidents from past campaigns—yet these reflective words fail to compensate for a strategy that now seems more like a cosmetic fix than a path to genuine reform.
Ultimately, EZEMA’s foray into political education comes off as little more than a band-aid applied to a festering wound. With the party still reeling from an electoral defeat that saw it lose ground to a contender campaigning solely in the Amhara region, the academy feels like a desperate, misdirected bid to reinvent a troubled identity. Whether this initiative can bridge the gap between lofty academic messages and the Cold, hard reality of voter dissatisfaction remains to be seen—but the current tone suggests it’s more spin than substance
